


say something (i'm giving up on you)

by BadWolfGirl01



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode: s02e13 Doomsday, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Inspired by Music, Introspection, Not A Fix-It, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 15:58:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12685143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolfGirl01/pseuds/BadWolfGirl01
Summary: It all happens so fast, there isn’t even time to blink.One moment she’s laughing, making jokes about Shiver and Shake; the next, clinging to the magnaclamp, whooping and hollering as the Daleks and Cybermen are sucked into the Void; the next, she’s falling through the air, knowing that the last thing she will see is the face of the man she loves more than anything screaming her name and reaching for her, utter agony in his eyes.And then she slams into something solid, and there’s this silent pause, an endless eternity of time where she hangs suspended in midair, her dad from the alternate universe holding her close; she locks eyes with the Doctor, sees agonized resignation there, and then there’s the warping, twisting feel as she punches through the world-walls and then everything is gone.Gone.He’s gone.(doomsday canon-verse introspection)





	say something (i'm giving up on you)

_Say something, I’m giving up on you_

_I’ll be the one if you want me to_

_Anywhere I would’ve followed you_

_Say something, I’m giving up on you_

_And I… am feeling so small_

_It was over my head_

_I know nothing at all_

_And I… will stumble and fall_

_I’m still learning to love_

_Just starting to crawl_

It all happens so fast, there isn’t even time to blink.

One moment she’s laughing, making jokes about Shiver and Shake; the next, clinging to the magnaclamp, whooping and hollering as the Daleks and Cybermen are sucked into the Void; the next, she’s falling through the air, knowing that the last thing she will see is the face of the man she loves more than anything screaming her name and reaching for her, utter agony in his eyes.

And then she slams into something solid, and there’s this silent pause, an endless eternity of time where she hangs suspended in midair, her dad from the alternate universe holding her close; she locks eyes with the Doctor, sees agonized resignation there, and then there’s the warping, twisting feel as she punches through the world-walls and then everything is gone.

Gone.

He’s gone.

She’s back in the lever room in Torchwood, but it’s the _wrong side,_ and she stands frozen, paralyzed, and then she screams—haunting and chilling and so, so full of _loss_ , because he’s _gone_ and she—she can’t—

The next thing she knows, she’s beating on the wall, desperate, sobbing, screaming, the words slipping past her lips without her permission: “Take me back! Take me _back!”_ and then, brokenly, quietly, “Take me back…”

“It’s stopped working,” Pete says, but she doesn’t _care_ , “He did it. He closed the breach,” like it’s _important_ , but nothing is, he’s worth more than two universes to her and she can’t, she can’t, how is she supposed to live with this pain?

(she leans against the wall, pressing her palms into it, laying her cheek flush against the cold, white, surface, the silent whiteness blocking her from reaching the man she loves, from reaching the Doctor, and for a moment she can almost feel him, leaning there, standing silent and broken in the same place she is, and she just, she just, she would give _anything_ to go back to him, anything)

“No,” she breathes, and she’s broken, lost, shattered and small and utterly alone, like a single grain of sand stranded in the middle of the ocean, far far away from everything she’s ever known.

(and then, and then, the presence solidifies for a moment and she can _feel_ him, he’s there, taking her hand one last time, brushing his fingers across her cheek, her hair, and then even that ghostly sensation is gone, gone, _gone_ )

“He’ll come,” she whispers, finally, stepping back from the wall that is just a wall again, without any trace of the Doctor. “He’ll come for me, he always does. He _promised_ ,” and the tenuous silence dissipates like mist blown away on the wind, and the tears begin again in earnest. “He always comes for me!” she shouts, hurls it at the universe, defiant, like it’s a dare, and she doesn’t care that it’s impossible.

He’ll come.

He _has_ to.

“Rose,” Jackie starts, but she doesn’t want to hear it, she doesn’t _care_ , her mum doesn’t know anything.

 _(always wait five and a half hours,_ he says, grinning brightly at her but there’s a shadow in his eyes, and it’s only later, after everything has happened, that he tells her the story of Reinette and what her letter made him think, and then he pulls her close and just holds her for a long, long time, and a part of her hopes, wishes, _needs_ him to never let go)

“Five and a half hours,” she says, practically begging, looking from Jackie to Pete to Mickey, “ _please_ , he said, he’ll come. If I just wait for him—if I leave, he won’t know where to find me!”

And maybe it’s the anguish in her voice, maybe it isn’t, maybe it’s because he truly believes the Doctor will come, but Mickey steps up and says, “I’ll stay with her. You go on ahead, I’ll… bring her back if he doesn’t come.”

Jackie nods, and it’s obvious she doesn’t believe the Doctor will come, but she doesn’t press the issue, just takes Pete’s hand and walks away.

And Rose waits, silent, for five and a half hours, just like he said, that one time, just like he promised, and yet he never comes.

(that night, she dreams of him, holding her as she sobs into his chest for Mickey and a Jackie who wasn’t her mum but was anyway, and for another lost chance at having a father, and then there’s a terrible rushing sound, wind in her ears, and an awful whiteness drips over everything like liquid, melts into a wall and no matter how hard she tries she can’t get through it, and all the while he calls to her from the other side, begging her to come back, asking why she left, and she cannot even _breathe_ )

(she wakes sobbing and tangled in blankets, and she doesn’t sleep again for the rest of the night)

…

It all happens so fast, there isn’t even time to blink.

Even for him, for a Time Lord with all of Time at his beck and call, there are still things he cannot stop, things he can’t move quickly enough to prevent. The self-loathing is always there in the back of his mind— _you could’ve saved her, you could’ve slowed Time, you’ve done it before, you just didn’t try hard enough_ —and it’s even louder now, as he stands silent and shocked in front of a blank white wall that is, once again, just a wall (no more trips to other universes, the world-walls properly sealed once more, because to attempt to travel between universes without the stabilizing effect of Gallifrey on the universe is something even the Deca would never have attempted, back in their Academy days), and even deeper in his mind (Time Lord brains, can calculate ten different things at once with ease, and one piece is already trying to figure out how to get her back) an insidious little voice whispers, _she doesn’t want you back, she left you on purpose, you’ve finally driven her away,_ and he knows it’s illogical but he can’t shake the feeling the voice is right and it makes him want to scream.

(he doesn’t scream; that’s reserved for the worst nights, when even he has to sleep and the memories of the War are too much, and now he thinks the color white might feature in those nightmares too)

Instead of screaming, he walks forward, slow and methodical, and leans against the wall, tears building in his eyes (he holds them back with sheer force of will and swallows them down, but he can’t swallow away the weight of the pain), pressing his hands and cheek against the smooth surface. And for a moment, he would swear he can _feel_ her, his Rose, his beautiful pink-and-yellow human, just there, just beyond his reach, and he doesn’t close his eyes even though he wants to, just soaks in the sensation and commits it to memory. And then he reaches out, like he’s taking her hand again, because he needs to feel it one last time, the feel of her small hand in his, and he brushes her hair back from her face, lingers on her cheek (not in reality, but he wants to and so maybe his mind is reaching out, making it whole, making _him_ whole), and then there’s an invisible _shudder_ and everything falls away again.

And then the wall is just a wall, plain and white, so white it sears his eyes, and Rose is gone, and he can’t feel her even if he stretches out to the furthest extent of his telepathic range; he stays still for just another heartsbeat, as though he can bring her back, or as though he can’t bear to step away (and even he isn’t sure which one it is), and then with a heavy sigh he pushes off the wall and turns away.

He stands, a statue carved from ice, frozen in the center of the room, hands in his pockets, and his eyes are empty and blank, and so, so _cold_ , and usually he can pass as a human almost without questioning because he looks so very like one, but if anyone were to see him now they would _never_ in a million years think he is a human. No, for there is absolute _nothing_ on his face; his eyes are black and void (and oh, that word will hurt for a long time yet) as the dead space behind the stars, and dark, and empty completely, and when he cocks his head, listening, the motion is entirely unhuman (a motion that _should_ be human but isn’t, tilting the head just so, or shrugging the shoulders just a bit, entirely too fluid and yet jerky and staggered in a way it shouldn’t be, although you can’t pinpoint the exact difference, the source of that constant pervading _wrongness_ ).

Listening, because there are voices floating up to the lever room, and with a sudden _snap_ and a jerk (snapping back into real-time with an audible crack), the Doctor _moves_ : a casual (and yet utterly, entirely deliberate), wandering walk, like he has nowhere to be and all the time in the world to get there, hands stuffed in his pockets, and he walks away, past the doors, down the stairs, and he doesn’t ever change pace, or even expression—like a frozen snapshot of a man, an instant of Time locked into place, and then _moving_ somehow—and if anyone had watched him they would’ve said it didn’t even look like he breathed.

(and that bit is because he isn’t breathing—his respiratory bypass kicked in the moment the lever went offline, and he’s not sure he’s breathed more than once or twice since then; and his hearts are beating all over the place, like a train roaring out of control, only there’s a very curious lack of rhythm to these beats, like the hearts have been knocked out of rhythm and they can’t quite seem how to get back together, like he’s lost some integral part of himself that keeps his hearts in sync, and without it there’s no hope for him, no rhythm, no pace, no beat left in his life)

(and that is a strangely accurate metaphor, or is it a simile, and suddenly he finds that he doesn’t quite _care_ anymore, and so he just stops thinking)

After a time (he’s not sure how long, he stopped paying attention to the machinelike ticking of the clock in his head, the seconds marching along like toy soldiers all in a row, shining and well-taken-care-of), he reaches the TARDIS again; he doesn’t do much, but yet there’s a pause where he’s standing still and silent outside Her familiar blue block-transfer shell, and he runs his hands down the dark blue painted “wood” of the shell and for a brief moment he wonders if she’d change it to grey, for him (or white—but no, not white, he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to see the color white in the same way again). And then, and then, he slides the key into the lock and twists it, and pushes open the door, and steps inside, and closes the door behind him, and all the while he never changes, his face still set on the empty blankness of utter and absolute, total despair.

…

He searches for months, although he won’t tell her that.

He spends entire days reading straight through the old Type 40 capsule operation manual, searching for a way to traverse the world-walls without Gallifrey, without completely destroying two universes and pulling them into the Void; and yet, each new page he reads only reinforces that which he already knows: it’s impossible.

There is no way to go get Rose.

No way for her to come to him, either; he is well and truly sunk.

She is _gone_.

(he spends another day or two silently mourning her; he goes through all his memories of her, one by one, and watches them all play out, from _run!_ to the very end, where she loses her grip and her fingers slide away and she’s falling, dragged away from him by the inexorable pull of the Void, and then Pete shows up—good old, Pete, saving her life, and at least she’s alive—and catches her, and the look on her face nearly destroys him)

(and when he’s finally done, when he has watched and rewatched every single second of time he’d spent with her, then he just sits and stares off into nothing and doesn’t even think, doesn’t even breathe for a while, until the TARDIS gets fed up with it and shocks him, gently, and makes him _move_ again)

So he pushes himself onwards; just because he can’t go and get her doesn’t mean he can’t still see her again, one last time, and he will be _damned_ if he doesn’t at least say goodbye.

(yes, in the past he’s been rather known for dropping companions off without saying goodbye, leaving them, because goodbye means an ending, means it’s over, and he has always and forever hated _endings_ ; but Rose deserves more, and he has something to say to her, something to tell her that he’d never quite managed to muster up the courage to say, except barely-audible whispers late at “night”, when she’s asleep with her head on his shoulder after watching a movie or reading)

So he reads the manual again.

And while he knows quite well by this point that travel between universes is impossible, there _is_ something mentioned, in the fine print, talking about power sources and mental projects and a few other things, but then it ends with saying that it is impossible to send a projection through, even, because the power required would be far too great.

In a fit of rage, he orbits the TARDIS around a supernova and hurls the offending book straight into the heart of it.

And that’s what gives him the idea—a star that’s gone supernova, but only just, would have massive amounts of power that if one simply accelerated the speed at which the supernova took place, could be enough to possibly power a mental projection through a crack in the world-walls, and he might just be able to see his Rose again.

So he works and he works, and he doesn’t sleep, until the Old Girl gets sick of his continued ignorance of his own physical health and shocks him _multiple_ times, until he finally throws his hands up and agrees to go lie down for a little while, even though he really is quite fine and does not need to sleep at all, he’s a _Time Lord_ after all, not a human (and a fresh wave of grief hits him at that, and oh he will never ever be over this pain). And even though he protests _loudly_ the whole way to his room (because no, a catnap on the jump seat in a short break from working does _not_ constitute sleeping according to his beloved ship), he really _does_ need to sleep, because he’s been burning himself up, and so when he finally makes it into his bedroom and lies down on the bed, after kicking off his converse, it’s no surprise he’s asleep within heartsbeats.

(he dreams, while he sleeps.

Of a pink-and-yellow human curled up next to him; of a tongue-touched grin, the likes of which has never been seen before in the universe and never will be seen again; of the brightly ringing sound of laughter, drifting through the console room, even as he’s trying to _work, Rose, can you keep it down over there,_ and then Jack’s voice echoes back and that is a whole other story he doesn’t even want to _think_ of right now, Jack, the Captain, so strong and good and everything, really, and yet now so _sharp_ and painful and _wrong_ , and no one should have to feel the pain of immortality; and her smile, not the tongue-in-teeth cheeky grin she bestows on everyone, but that bright and golden smile so rarely seen, the one she only shows to him, warm and caring and tender and enough to spark his hearts into double-time, enough to make him do anything in the universe, even to break the very Laws of Time, damn the consequences; and then he reaches out, tugs her into his arms and holds her as she cries, sobbing for who knows what—for him, maybe, for the loss they’ve both suffered—and then suddenly a blast of white and she’s _gone_ again, ripped away, torn away like she never even existed, leaving nothing but a ragged, jagged hole in his chest and the ghost of her beautiful, brilliant laugh haunting his ears for every long second that passes after, and in the distance he can hear her begging, _come back to me, Doctor, why’d you leave, I promised you forever, and you agreed, didn’t you mean it?)_

He wakes, not quite sobbing but close, the tears nearly on his cheeks this time, and he swallows them down, forces them back again, even though it’s hard, choking away the pain and the sorrow and the grief and the loss, dividing up his brain like he can but really _shouldn’t_ do, because he can never hope to focus with this much sheer emotion weighing down his hearts and slowing down his mind, making every response and thought just that infinitesimal amount slower; the TARDIS doesn’t _like_ it but he steadfastly ignores Her humming [disapproval] in the back of his mind, because Her opinion really doesn’t _matter_ to him right now. Because he’s lost his Rose and the whole universe can take care of itself for a while, because he is _tired_ of that job. Because the universe is the very thing that stole his Rose from him in the _first_ place, and he’s not really sure it still _deserves_ saving.

(Rose wouldn’t let him say that, he knows; she’d shake her head and say, _‘s not about **deserve** , Doctor,_ and she’d give him that look, and he’d have no choice but to agree, because she’s right and because he knows that deep down inside, because she knows exactly how to calm his temper, to make him see again, to make him think, to pull him out of the selfishness and the darkness lurking inside, the Warrior’s sharp hissing dark anger)

(but Rose isn’t here, and he can’t do it on his own; he can’t just forget, can’t just separate the universe from _Rose is gone,_ and it doesn’t even _matter_ that she’d hate the way he’s acting right now, because she’s _gone_ , and the only thing that keeps him going is the message he still has to tell her)

He refuses to sleep again.

He does eat, though, just enough to keep him going, because it takes time he doesn’t really want to spare, and every second he spends wasted now is a second less he’ll have with his Rose when this finally works (it _will_ work, he decides, fiercely determined) (and a small part of him wonders what he will do if it doesn’t) (and an even _tinier_ part of him is terrified at the thought). It takes weeks and weeks of research, of adjusting the TARDIS’s systems to handle the shock of power, to reconfigure a few settings to allow him to utilize the supernova; he spends a few days just building the telepathic amplifier and projector, the piece of equipment that will allow him to be a _projection_ , a holographic one, instead of just a voice. And then, finally, he finds the last crack in the universe, near a star that’s only a few decades or so from supernovaing, and he just nudges the timelines a little bit until the process begins, and the TARDIS hooks on, and he waits, and waits, and waits again, calling out to his Rose with all his might.

It works.

A paper-thin image of Rose appears in the TARDIS, and with a little smile (because there she is, his _Rose_ ) he turns to face her and waits for her to speak.

…

_Say something, I’m giving up on you_

_I’m sorry that I couldn’t get to you_

_Anywhere I would’ve followed you_

_Say something, I’m giving up on you_

_And I… will swallow my pride_

_You’re the one that I love and I’m saying_

_Goodbye_

…

“Where are you?”

It’s the first thing that pops out of her mouth, when she realizes the TARDIS isn’t, in fact, about to materialize on the cold, windswept beach in front of her, no matter how hard she wishes it would; it’s a silly question, really, but she can’t seem to stop it, barely can control herself, because it’s _him_ , her Doctor standing in front of her.

“In the TARDIS,” he says faintly, and the paper-thin projection shifts a bit, and she swallows, bites back a sob. “There’s one tiny little gap left in the universe, just about to close, and it takes a lot of power to send this projection. I’m in orbit around a supernova. I’m burning up a sun to say goodbye.”

She sucks in a sharp breath, the barely-suppressed pain on his face triggering a reaction in her, and she wants to reach out and smooth away those lines around his eyes. “You look like a ghost,” she says in a rough whisper, the words slipping out of her mouth before she really thinks about it; almost immediately she wishes she could take them back, because there are far more important things to say, here and now, in this little time they’ve somehow been granted, but the Doctor doesn’t really react.

“Hold on,” is all he says, and he pulls out his sonic, aims it at something (probably the console, she thinks vaguely, but it doesn’t really matter so she forgets it).

And then he’s _there_ , looking so solid, so real, and she’s lifting her hand before she even knows she’s moving. “Can I—”

Before her hopeful question can even finish, he’s shaking his head. “I’m still just an image. No touch.”

_No touch._

It breaks her heart, _again_. And certainly it must be even worse for him—this body of his is so tactile, always seeking the next thing to touch, and how many times has he derived comfort from the simple act of taking her hand? It’s not _fair_ , not for either of them, and she can hardly breathe.

“Can’t you come through properly?”

(and maybe it’s a bit whiny, yes, the question—a bit ridiculous, because if he _could_ he’d certainly already be there—but she has to ask it anyway, she _has_ to)

He shakes his head again, a sorrowful ache in his eyes. “The whole thing would fracture. Two universes would collapse.”

“So?” she asks, and then laughs, a watery, almost hysterical thing, a show that she’s only joking (but really, she’s not, because _sod the universes_ , there are more out there, and he would never let her think that way but she knows in this moment he _is_ , even though he would never admit it, because it goes against everything he is); and he laughs just a little bit, too, a tiny noise with a bit of a smile, but his eyes are still so, so dark and broken.

There’s a pause, while she fumbles for the right words to say (knowing in the heart of her what it is she needs to say, but not ready yet, choked with anxiety now that the moment has finally come), while he shifts, and then finally he speaks. “Where are we? Where did the gap come out?”

And that’s a safe topic, one she can answer. “We’re in Norway.”

“Norway,” he says with a nod, like he’s known the answer all along, like _of course it came out in Norway_. “Right.”

“About fifty miles out of Burgen. It’s called Darlig ulv Stranden,” she says, fumbling slightly with the unfamiliar words but getting them out clearly enough.

“Dalek?” he asks, sharp surprise and worry flashing across his face, the same reaction she’d had the first time she’d heard the name, and she can’t help but laugh.

“ _Darlig_ ,” she corrects, stressing the ‘r’. “It’s Norwegian for ‘bad’. This translates as Bad Wolf Bay.”

He blinks, naked shock wiping all expression off his face for a moment, the realization that she as Bad Wolf had known this would happen, had seen it, and hadn’t prevented it anyway an awful, startling thing. She tries to pass it off as nothing, like they hadn’t spent their entire time traveling for the first year (or more, she’s not quite sure, time moves strangely in the TARDIS) seeing those words spread everywhere they went _[[I take the words and I scatter them through Time and Space, a message to lead myself here]]._ “How long have we got?” (shaking herself a little, focusing on the here-and-now, blinking away the little flash of pure, pure artron gold)

“About two minutes,” he says in return, grateful for the subject change, she can see it in his eyes.

And she chokes.

It’s like a punch to the gut—sickening, all the air leaving her lungs in a gasp, the knowledge that these are the last two minutes stripping her of everything, and a few tears start to trickle down her cheeks as she gasps out, “I can’t think of what to say!”

(that’s a lie, although he won’t know that; she knows exactly what to say, and yet she’s terrified to say it, afraid that he’ll not want to return the sentiment)

“You’ve still got Mister Mickey, then?” he asks, watching her face closely, as though he can see the internal battle taking place within her; she grasps the safe topic eagerly, with both hands, and nods.

“Yeah. There’s five of us now. Me, Mickey, Mum, Dad… and the baby.”

“You’re not?” and there’s shock and fear and maybe a bit of horror (and she might laugh, in different circumstances, at the idea that she would’ve shacked up with someone else right after losing him) in his eyes.

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s Mum. She’s three months gone. More Tylers on the way.”

“And what about you?” he asks, intent, almost _desperate_ , like he needs to know. “Are you—”

She doesn’t wait to hear what he’s asking, just wants to see him smile again, real and vibrant and large as life. “Yeah, I’m back to working at the shop.”

There’s a pause. “Oh, good for you,” he manages with a bit of enthusiasm, and she laughs for real this time, even though it’s choked with tears.

“Shut up,” she says. “No, I’m not. There’s still a Torchwood on this planet. It’s open for business. I think I know a thing or two about aliens.”

He snorts a bit, a bit of a smile on his face, but it’s a sad one, thick and heavy and weighted down with his grief and pain and sorrow. “Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth,” he says fondly. “You’re dead, officially, back home. So many people died that day and you’ve gone missing. You’re on a list of the dead. Here you are, living a life day after day. The one adventure I can never have.”

(and he sounds so _sad_ , so awful and full of regret, and she doesn’t know how to make it go away)

She sucks in a breath, has to ask. “Am I ever going to see you again?”

The answer, when it comes, is instant and sharp. “You can’t.” No dissembling, or distracting, like he’s usually wont to do—just the fact, cold and hard and as unyielding as the white wall in the lever room in Torchwood (the one room she will never, ever set foot in again).

“What’re you going to do?” she asks, crying in earnest now, because it’s not fair and he’s no good on his own, he can’t be alone, but he’s got no one now that she’s gone, and _I would’ve stayed with you forever,_ she thinks but doesn’t say, because there’s no _time_ , she’s no Time Lord but she can still feel the seconds ticking away, like grains of sand falling through an hourglass, and they are almost out of time now.

“Oh, I’ve got the TARDIS,” he says, casually (not at _all_ casual). “Same old life, Last of the Time Lords.”

“On your own?” she asks, and he nods, just a tiny movement, but enough.

And now is the time, she has to say it now, this is the last chance she’s got… “I,” she tries, through her tears, sucks in another breath, tries again. “I love you.”

The words tumble out all in a rush, but the meaning gets through, and she knows he understands, he hears, because there’s a smile on his face (small and thin and faint but _there_ ).

“Quite right, too,” he says softly, tenderly. And then he hesitates, like he’s not sure, and then something _shifts_ in his eyes, warm and dark and beautiful as the first time she saw them, and he says, “And, I suppose, if it’s my last chance to say it—Rose Tyler—”

…

The TARDIS had dinged a warning at him, but he’d pressed on anyway, had thought he had enough time—

He was wrong.

“Rose Tyler,” he starts, and his lips are forming the ‘I’ when the projection cuts out.

He goes still. Lets out the breath in a slow sigh of awful _pain_ , but it’s an old pain, the new one has yet to hit.

(he realizes, distantly, that there’s a single tear trailing down his cheek—he can feel the cool dampness of that single small droplet as it leaves his eye, rolls over his cheekbone and down to his chin, where it hangs, crystalline, for less than a second that somehow stretches into infinity, and then it’s f a l l i n g)

(and the reality hits him)

(the message, the one thing, those three words he hadn’t yet managed to say to his Rose, the only reason that he’s still functioning, even if it’s a parody of his normal self—he didn’t say it.)

He wants to scream, to shout, to rage at the universe, to howl his agony until every star in the sky is forced to acknowledge his pain, but he can’t—he can do nothing but stand frozen, solid and cold (but not numb, never numb, no matter how much he wants to be) and so, so still as the weight of the pain crushes him beneath it. Even breathing is agony—so he stops, just holds his breath until his respiratory bypass kicks in, and then stands and stands and stands and wonders if he can suffocate. Just _stop_. Stop breathing, stop his hearts, stop every single organ in his body—would he regenerate from that? Does he want to?

(the pain would lessen with a regeneration, he thinks; he will still love Rose, he will never _stop_ , but this regeneration was made exclusively for her and he will better handle the loneliness of her absence in a new body, a body that doesn’t crave the touch of her hand in his like air, the sound of her laugh like water, the sight of her brilliant smile like food)

(and yet—should he?)

After the War, he’d faced this same dilemma—he’d only just regenerated, the sudden loss of Gallifrey and the entire hivemind one shock too many for his stretched-thin Eighth body to handle, and he hadn’t wanted to _live_ anymore, not after waking up to that screaming _silence_ in his mind, a great gaping black hole where the population of Gallifrey should have been. He’d spent a little while thinking up ways he could just regenerate, over and over and over again, use up all his regenerations in one go (after all, he only had three left—twelve bodies, eleven regenerations, the limit put on the lifespan of a Time Lord). Now there are only _two_ , he could do that pretty easily, and after all he would only need to go through one re-birth (because if you die in the first fifteen hours of your regen cycle, you _die_ , no regenerating from that)—

And yet.

That one awful thing about Rassilon’s egotistical decision to tie the Time Lords into Time itself… Schroedinger’s universe, so to speak. The universe only exists for certain if there is a Time Lord observing it, and he is the Last of the Time Lords. He cannot _die_.

But oh, how he wants to.

(Rose is gone. Without her, what is the point of living? Yes, he’s lost people before, but not like _this_ , not so intense and screaming and painful, and he just wants to scream, because it hurts so, so much, choking him, and he cannot breathe (will not breathe?) and everything just seems so pointless. Why should he go on? There will be other companions, he knows, but right now that doesn’t matter so much; he is trapped in the silence and he doesn’t know how to break free anymore, and the Warrior is so close to the surface right now, and he wishes more than anything to go back, change the past, but he can’t, he knows the Laws of Time as well as he knows his own heartsbeat, and going back, crossing his own timeline like that, breaks every single one of them. There’s a long, drawn out sigh, and a silence, and he can’t seem to move.

He’s lost, lost in an ocean of emotion, all mixed together and jumbled up until he hardly even knows _what_ it is he’s feeling; and he stands frozen in the console room, surrounded by his beloved ship, the only constant in a sea of years and change, and he didn’t even say goodbye.)

All the days he spent trying to come up with the words to say, and he spent his last precious minutes with his precious girl talking about nothings, because he was too scared to say the words, to have an _ending_ , and now she will never know the depths of his love for her, and she will never know the extent of his pain, how much he would give to be trapped there with her; he didn’t say the three words that meant the most, and he didn’t say goodbye, and Rose will never ever know.

 _(I’m burning up a sun to say goodbye,_ he’d said, and seen the way the light in her eyes flickered out at those words, but a stubborn shadow of hope remained, all the way until the very end, until _you can’t._ She’d known it was goodbye from the very start, but he’d never actually _said_ it, no closure for either of them.)

The TARDIS hums quiet [comfort] at him, but he pushes Her away, and still he doesn’t move, only finally drawing in a breath because he knows he needs to. The [comfort] remains, but there’s an undercurrent of [worry], now, and he’s upset his beloved ship too (and the Old Girl loves Rose as much as he does, he knows, has always loved Rose, from the very beginning, when She convinced him to go back for the London shop girl, months and months later, when he still couldn’t get her out of his head), and he is breathing now but his chest is swollen with a thousand emotions with no names, and quite suddenly he feels like he’s about to explode—

And still, still, he cannot break free from the all-encompassing _silence_.

 _(I love you. Rose Tyler, I love you,_ he wants to say, but he can’t, because it’s too late, and now she’ll never hear him say it, no matter that he’s sure she already knows. She needs to hear it. It needs saying.)

(and now he will never say it)

The Doctor stands, still and quiet and utterly blank, tears dripping down his cheeks in a steady pattern, and shakes his head.

What else can he do?

(he never will say it)

_Say something I’m giving up on you_

_And I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you_

_And anywhere I would’ve followed you (ooh-oh)_

_Say something I’m giving up on you_

 

_Say something I’m giving up on you_

_Say something…_


End file.
